Some interesting theories about honeybee die-offs, including anecdotal observations about the health of organic hives and the trap of the bigger-is-better mentality.

The Iraq spending bill just passed in Congress includes $3 billion in agricultural disaster relief as well as a one-month extension to dairy price supports, aka, the MILC program. Now, you might be wondering what the big deal is with a one-month extension, and it's this: without that extra month, the program would have been ineligible to be automatically included in the next Farm Bill that would govern agricultural expenditures until 2012. The MILC program has had broad support in the agricultural lobbying community, largely in recognition of the fact that dairy producers would be backed into a take-no-prisoners approach to finding funding in other budgets.

World

Dave Johnson points out that Fair Trade coffee has its own market barriers that leave out more marginalized producers.

Much ink has been spilled over Peak Oil, but global demand and environmental constraints may indicate that we've passed peak milk and fish. Though with milk, it might also be that there's a producer shortage, at least in the U.S.

Africa has been deemed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be the continent most at risk from global climate disruption, and this article notes that the effects are already being felt in the extinction and endangerment of livestock breeds that depend on fragile, steadily degrading ecosystems.

Taken as a region, however, Southeast Asia puts in a fairly good bid to the claim of most at risk from climate change: 500 million of its residents live in areas vulnerable to sea-level rise. Though the area hasn't been a major focus of the international climate debate, between greenhouse emissions, forest burning for biofuel crop production and other agriculture, as well as the trade offs between meeting energy needs through either coal or hydropower, there's a lot to think about in terms of their place in the global climate picture.